


A Legendary Tale of Living-Room Furniture and IKEA Sharks

by InsertSthMeaningful



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Erik Lehnsherr Loves Charles Xavier, Erik You Slut, Erik and Charles Are Both Fertile Bastards, Family Fluff, Gen, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, mutants in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25529560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful
Summary: Charles and Erik break their couch because ofreasons.Now, it's only natural that they would go furniture shopping at the nearest IKEA- and bring their five kids, while they're already at it.
Relationships: David Haller & Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Lorna Dane & Erik Lehnsherr & Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff
Comments: 42
Kudos: 114





	A Legendary Tale of Living-Room Furniture and IKEA Sharks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Junechildart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Junechildart/gifts).



> This was inspired by the amazing JuneChildArt who asked for someone to write a Cherik-and-family-buying-IKEA-sharks fic in the X-Men X-Traordinaire discord server (go ahead and join it if you feel like having good conversation with fellow X-Men fans). 
> 
> All my thanks to the lovely FlightInFlame for beta-ing 🥰

Erik and Charles were having a night off.

They had both cancelled their respective dinner invitations and business calls. The children were over at Irene and Raven’s, probably wreaking havoc in the befriended couple’s home together with Kurt and Anna Marie, and there had been a romantic candlelight dinner, courtesy of Erik’s inimitable culinary skill.

Then, after they had proceeded to the dessert, their couch broke.

Now, you might think that couches don’t just break like that out of the blue, especially not family-sized ones. Except theirs did. With a very audible creak of wood and springs. Just like that! For no reason!

"Well,” Charles muttered from among the sad remains of their seating furniture, “that was anticlimactic.”

Erik groaned and heaved himself up from where he had been riding his husband’s cock _v_ _ery enthusiastically._

Okay, maybe there was a reason after all.

Three days later, they had the kids all wrangled into their minivan and were on the way to the nearest IKEA.

“No but seriously, _how_ have you never heard of Germany’s Next Top Model?” Pietro exclaimed, outraged, and super-speed-tapped Charles’ headrest.

Erik on the passenger seat chided, “Pietro, your Dad is driving. Leave it!”

“No, no.” Charles glanced into the rear-view mirror and winked at the twins sandwiching a confused Lorna between them. “He has a point. Why did you never tell me that you have the same show but in German?”

Anya Nina, their eldest, sniggered from the last row. “Because he could have participated in his blue dress and red wig.”

“Oh, teenagers,” Erik muttered and pinched the bridge of his nose.

For once, Charles agreed. Their children were terrible, _terrible_ little monsters.

Then again, he maybe shouldn’t have shown them his and Erik’s more private photo album by accident – the one with the pictures of Erik in drag, among other things.

“I’m sorry, darling, I really am,” he murmured and reached over to very innocently pat his husband’s thigh.

“Maybe one day I will find in me the strength to forgive thee, but that day has not yet come,” Erik sniffed and looked out of the window.

Charles squeezed his khaki-clad leg a little more. On the backseat, Lorna stifled a giggle.

Erik grunted and very pointedly stared at the blue Subaru whizzing by on the opposite lane.

Then, Charles pinched his husband’s leg, and Erik exploded.

“Gottverdammt Charles, you’re driving! Keep your hands to yourself! And your eyes on the road!”

Charles just couldn’t resist it: Giving Erik’s thigh a last pat before his hand went back on the steering wheel, he grinned and said, “Oh, you love it, you twit.”

A choir of snickering floated from behind them, intertwined with the light amusement David was diffusing, and Erik curled up to lightly bonk his head against the passenger window.

“Are we there yet?” he groaned.

They were there.

Erik had procured them a shopping trolley – one of the big, flat ones, ideal for carrying cumbersome packages as well as cumbersome children – and now they were roaming the corridors; Pietro was darting between the displayed furniture and startling other customers, Wanda as close on his heels as she could get; David had decided that if there was still free space on the trolley, it might as well be used to accommodate a twelve-year-old; and Lorna had sought sanctuary on Charles’ lap as he wheeled beside Erik, with Anya trudging after them and desperately trying to log into the warehouse’s WiFi. They gathered some overly curious stares – there was no way to determine whether they earned this because: 

1) of their children’s rather unusual hair colours (or hairstyles in David’s case)

2) Erik pushing the trolley without laying a finger on it

3) Charles’ wheelchair

or 4) maybe just their very obvious gayness.

In any case, Erik didn’t give a damn.

“Well,” Charles said when they reached the sofa section and Erik brought their shopping cart with its very David-shaped cargo to a halt by a mere wave of his hand. “Here we are.”

“Here we are,” Erik agreed and then decided to look a little lost so Charles would be the one to take matters in hand.

Gott, how he hated furniture shopping.

“You know I heard that, right?” his husband inquired, wiggling his fingers by his temple.

Erik rewarded him with a flat look. “Yes. And _you_ know you look ridiculous every time you do that, right?”

There came a snort from behind them – Anya, sneaking a look at her fathers before she focused back on the screen of her smartphone – and yet, Charles had the gall to protest.

“It’s still better than the jazz hand thing you had going on when I met you!”

In a pale imitation of Erik’s absolutely _wonderful_ and _fabulous_ and _fear-inducing_ trademark gesture, he raised his hands and splayed his fingers, and little Lorna on his lap squealed when he began to imitate Erik’s even _more_ effectively dramatic slogan with a skill that approximated Raven’s mimicry disturbingly well. “ _I am the Master of Magnetism, and Homo sapi–_ ”

Then, Lorna squealed even louder, because Erik was leaning forward and pressing his lips to his silly husband’s lips until said husband was giggling and pleading, “Mercy, mercy, oh grand Master of Magnetism!”

“I hate you,” Erik told him matter-of-factly when he drew back and ruffled Lorna’s hair as he went.

Charles grinned. “I love you, too.”

The simultaneous clearing of two throats in front of them saved them from a very, very cheesy romantic moment in the middle of IKEA’s couch section.

“Have you already decided on a couch?” Wanda asked, and Pietro followed up in a flash, “Can we get hot dogs now?”

David underlined the later inquiry with a very enthusiastic psionic nudge.

Erik said, “Um.”

Charles said, “We’re working on it, don’t worry. Now, do you kids want to go have a look around in the meantime?”

“I have to babysit _again_ , don’t I?” Anya dead-panned promptly.

Turning towards her in his wheelchair, Charles quirked an eyebrow. “Now that you mention it, I’m afraid you’re drafted, young lady.”

Erik settled for sneaking her one of his I-understand-you-one-hundred-percent-and-I’m-sorry stares. “But you can drive back if you want,” he offered.

Anya broke into a smile at the prospect of getting to exercise her skills behind the steering wheel, and the air was filled with a sudden buzzing as her excitement jumped over to every unfortunate insect trapped in the IKEA and made them speed about in wild somersaults and loopings. She nodded enthusiastically and slid her phone in her hoodie’s pocket, then went to pick up Lorna from Charles’ lap and settled her on her hips.

“Pietro, no shenanigans this time,” Erik ordered. His son nodded solemnly, then proceeded to poke his twin sister in the ribs.

Charles was leaning down to David. “If anything happens or you feel like it’s getting too much, you can ask Anya any time to escort you back to us, yes? And if it comes to the worst, you can call out to me. I’m always here for you.”

David nodded and gratefully accepted a light hug from his Dad.

“Wanda, try not to disintegrate the reality of the stairs or furniture just because they’re in your way.”

“Lorna, just because the plants in the last section have the same colour as your hair doesn’t mean we’ll buy them.”

“Anya, if _anything at all_ happens, promise us you’ll keep a cool head.”

Charles and Erik realised they had probably overdone it with their advice when all that was left of their children were some hurriedly thrown “See you later!”s and footsteps fading out in the distance.

“Well,” said Charles.

“Well,” said Erik, “time to have a look at sofas.”

Charles decided they had looked at sofas for long enough when Erik began to, um, _test_ them for their _stability_.

“Erik,” he hissed and eyed a few passing customers whose half-amused, half-appalled thoughts were taking his shields under fire, “could you please stop humping that couch?”

“I’m not humping it,” his husband sniffed and very reluctantly ceased to rattle at the armrest of a very purple, very hideous sofa. He didn’t get up from where he was straddling it, though. “I’m trying to see if it will be able to take us.”

In Charles’ opinion, what Erik was doing still looked very much like humping.

He shook his head and began to steer towards a more decently coloured – that is, greenish beige – living room suite in the back. “You’re the worst. And there’s no chance we’re buying that purple atrocity.”

“It’s not purple, it’s magenta,” Erik corrected him, but followed nonetheless. Then, when he saw what couch Charles had set his sights on, he stopped dead in his tracks. “You’re not fucking me on a vomit-coloured sofa.”

“Erik!” Charles whisper-screeched and dug his fingers into the armrests of his wheelchair, desperately willing his bloodflow to neither go to his cheeks nor to his lower regions.

An elderly couple shot him a pitying glance from where they were inspecting a shiny teak wood rocking chair.

“What? Oh look, they have other colour options, too.” Erik sauntered over to grasp at a few stripes of grey and blue fabric dangling from the sofa’s price tag. “What do you think about slate grey?”

Charles groaned. “That would be an _excellent_ choice, my darling.”

He got spared another one of Erik’s Patented Couch Testing Sessions when he felt their horde of kids returning into his range. Erik, too, straightened up from where he had flopped down onto the ‘vomit-coloured’ living room suite. He had taken to equipping their off-spring with myriads of silver bracelets, gold necklaces and titanium rings (however, he had drawn the line at Anya’s wish for a bellybutton piercing, even though he had been enthused about her earlobes neatly adorned with a variety of skulls, miniature flowers and other dangling nonsense), so now he could monitor them like a scientist would monitor a pack of wolves with tracking collars around their neck.

“Please tell me those plushies aren’t what I think they are,” he muttered to Charles when the children wandered into view.

Charles snorted mutely and savoured his husband’s desperation bleeding over to him like a fine wine. “It’s not like they’re wrong.”

Three minutes later, the kids had reached them and were disposing about a dozen IKEA sharks on the arm–, back–, and headrest of the sofa, effectively trapping their Papa in a prison of plushy fins and pristinely white rows of teeth.

“We’re not buying those,” Erik stated and glared at a particularly intrusive three-foot-long shark which David’s telekinesis had ferried onto his chest.

“But Papaaa...” Lorna clambered onto the couch and ploughed her way through the sea of marine creatures until she could snuggle up against Erik’s chest. “Please? Pretty please?”

Charles grinned when his husband sighed and leaned down to buss a kiss against their youngest daughter’s seaweed hair, then was submitted to the combined power of three pairs of puppy eyes from the twins and David.

“We’re not buying _all_ of those,” Erik finally gave in. “A small one for each of you. Is that compromise acceptable?”

The children’s cheers could probably be heard in the whole exhibition hall and beyond.

After they had gone through the checkout, Erik looked at their purchase on the trolley, with the couch and the sharks (and a very small, very prickly cactus they had bought because David thought it looked like his hair and Charles hadn’t been able to resist after all) in a neat pile – and had to do a double-take.

“Charles,” he casually asked his husband wheeling beside him (with a drowsy Lorna back in his lap), “why do we have a three-foot shark on top of the five small ones?”

Charles glanced up at him with a very, very innocent raising of his eyebrows. “I don’t know. Maybe it jumped into the cart in the very last minute? When you weren’t looking?”

“I’m _not_ ,” Erik grumbled, “sharing my part of the mattress with an IKEA shark. Or sharing you with it, for that matter.”

Seven hours later, Erik and Charles – very wrung-out and very sweaty from their evening activities between the sheets – were lying side-by-side in the dark of their bedroom, which was only slightly illuminated by the nightlight in the corridor.

Erik grinned and rolled over to tangle his legs with Charles’ and bury his head under his husband’s chin.

“We’ll christen the new couch next Friday, when the twins are sleeping over at Stark’s and Emma is taking David, Lorna and Anya to the opera with her quintuplets. How does that sound?”

“Absolutely wonderful, my dear,” Charles said. “Let’s just not get caught, or Anya and Pietro will maim us.”

“Hmm. They _would_ go commit patricide if they knew we were fucking on the sofa.”

Then, they were still for a whole five minutes.

Erik nuzzled closer against Charles’ smooth chest and listened to his husband’s heartbeat slow. Beneath his splayed hands, Charles’ ribcage expanded and contracted rhythmically, and Erik would have thought he had fallen asleep, were it not for Charles’ warm presence folded both gingerly and passionately around the edges of his awareness.

He grunted when Charles shifted, reached for something on their bedside table and threw it onto Erik’s side of the mattress.

It landed with a soft, almost inaudible _thump_. A fuzzy edge grazed the small of Erik’s back.

“Did you just throw your IKEA shark onto my side of the bed, Charles?”

“ _His_ name is Max, Erik,” Charles sniffed. “Like the fake one you gave me the first time I tried to chat you up.”

“And _why_ is Max on my side of the mattress now, Charles? Do I have to be jealous?” Erik rumbled and jammed his head farther under his husband’s chin, just so much that it would make him uncomfortable.

“No reason, love.” Charles’ fingers came to tangle in Erik’s locks and pull his head down, letting Charles move his chin again and press a wet kiss to Erik’s forehead. “I just thought, since your side of the bed is now occupied, you might like to stay at mine.”

Erik gaped. Then, he snorted and heaved himself up on his elbows to give his husband a real kiss. A long, sloppy, very intense kiss.

“You’re the worst. Go to sleep, you idiot,” he whispered when they paused for air.

Charles grinned against his jaw. “I love you, too.”

The next morning, they woke up tangled in their sheets, Erik with a massive case of bedhair and Charles with one human shark and one plush shark in his arms.

For the rest of his plushy life, Max the IKEA Shark had successfully found a new home among their sheets. 

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: Anya Nina (a fusion of comic!Erik's and movie!Erik's daughters) may not be allowed to get a bellybutton piercing, but she has a tattoo. A big one, all over her back, with really _a lot_ of animals. Auntie Emma helps her hide it from Charles in particular. 
> 
> I hope you liked it! If you did, **please** consider leaving kudos and a comment. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate, just a "+kudos" or a "loved it!" would make my day!!! It means so much to an author to see people take the time to actually type out words instead of simply hitting one (1) kudos button, and it's a very easy way to make us writers - who dedicate so much of our free time to create content for you - happy!


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